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Monthly Archives: August 2014

I am slowly working on cutting back caffeine, but meanwhile I do usually have a cup at least every other day and often one cup a day when I’m busy with work. This is a great way to get my coffee for the morning, it’s cool, refreshing and it includes breakfast! Perfect for a busy weekday morning!

Wake Up Smoothie (use as much of each as you see fit, I made enough to last through breakfast and lunch):

coffee (ice) cubes
frozen banana
frozen berries
good organic oats
cacao/cocoa powder
chia seeds
almond milk
water
{greens would be perfect here, I just happened to not have harvested the garden before making this this morning}

This is like having dessert for breakfast! It’s marvelous and totally versatile. You could add just about any of the usual smoothie suspects to this.

I had a moment last week. Many of us have had this moment. I saw a recent picture of myself and thought “Who IS that?” It just didn’t look like the me I want to be presenting to the world. I’ll admit, I was sad. I was embarrassed. I was even a little scared. Instead of getting lost in those feelings though, I decided to make a conscious decision to just channel the frustration. To get some momentum and keep using it. To let it motivate me. When you’re discouraged, it’s really easy to quit. Ultimately, though, it’s easier to continue than to start all over once the discouraged feelings wear off. I love this quote:

1. I know what to do. I know how to exercise, how to eat well, how to be positive and carry on.

2. I enjoy being active. Of course, it often feels like it’s easier not to, but when I do it, I enjoy it. I feel good about myself afterward. There’s a lot of good payoff there

3. I love healthy food. I enjoy many unhealthy foods too, but I’m an avid vegetable and culinary herb gardener, I’m pretty aware of and grateful for where my food comes from, and I truly love most healthy foods. It’s just about adding in more good stuff to crowd out the bad stuff (a sentiment I borrowed from the Hungry For Change documentary- highly recommended)

4. I know WHY I need to be healthy. I work in the medical field, I’m pretty connected to my inner self and to my future goals– all good motivators for a healthy life!

5. That photo serves as an EXCELLENT motivator to be thinking clearly and working hard on becoming a version of me that I’m happy and proud to present to the world.

And best of all, I have lots of support. I have a great network of family & friends who inspire and encourage me.

My husband and I are leaning into a healthier lifestyle. We’ve been on and off about healthy living, and right now we have some work to do. We’ve been moderately healthy, but we don’t always have good habits. We enjoy being active but are most often inactive. We enjoy healthy food but often eat too much unhealthy food. You get the idea. So right now we’re working on five simple things to lean us in to a healthier September (and beyond):

1. Get enough sleep

2. Drink enough water

3. Eat enough fruits & vegetables

4. Take a multivitamin

5. Start walking regularly

* I know there is some debate out there about vitamins, and I’m not really interested in participating in that debate. The simple fact is that right now our diet is suboptimal. While we’re working on it, we have decided to supplement. That is a decision we feel good about.

This is an exercise from my personal development binder outlining the purpose of working and working hard/working smart. Of course, work can mean any way you contribute in life and does not necessarily mean work for pay.

This is only my particular exercise about my particular work life {again, the only life I know how to live is my own}. This is not one size fits all – everyone’s list would be a little different. This is a wonderful exercise though, and I thought it was worth sharing. It really gives my career goals some weight when I get down to the MEANING behind them.

Because this is real life, I do not necessarily give my very best every single day, but this a helpful reminder of why I should be committed to doing just that. This is a good page in my binder to turn to when I’m feeling unmotivated or discouraged, and it helps me remember why my career goals are so very important. It’s a good, simple way to renew my focus.

Essentially the exercise is to answer the following questions:

why bother setting goals to succeed in my career? what is my motivation? why is it important to do my best at work?

CAREERWhy I always strive to do great work:

To contribute to society: to participate in making the world better, to do something to help

For my loved ones: to contribute to our marriage by doing my part to help my husband, bear his burdens and make his life easier & to make my family & friends proud

For my coworkers: To make sure I am a valuable team member and the work load is fairly divided

For the clients: To be delivering a premium quality service for client satisfaction (and thus continued contracts)

For our financial freedom: to make money to finance our daily life and contribute to our financial goals/make our dreams come true

For my emotional health: To feel needed, to feel proud of the work I do, to relieve stress {“as a cure for worry, work”), to be confident

For my physical health: to be productive {which is essential for health & happiness}.

For my mental health: to keep growing and learning, to exercise my brain and stay sharp

To guard my character: I do my best work as a point of honor: to have a clear conscience, to sleep well knowing I have done my best, to honor my commitments, and to be glad to sign my name to my work reputation.

To show my gratitude: to make the most of this amazing work at home opportunity

To make the most of my time {don’t phone it in. we spend more time working than doing anything else- make sure that time is well spent}

To respect the training: to make my student loans and years of education count for something important

To invest in the future: so I will be prepared and qualified for and open to amazing future opportunities by growing my reputation, references, resume. {who knows what the future may hold?}

I have had A New Earth worksheets printed in my personal development binder for a while now, and the Oprah & Eckhart Tolle chapter discussions saved on my PVR for some time now. I have started this book a couple of times, but I’m looking forward to really diving in!

“New York Times bestselling author Geneen Roth galvanized millions of readers with Women Food and God, a book that drew upon Roth’s thirty years of teaching about the charged relationship between food and our inner lives. Her deeply compassionate and insightful approach to some of the most painful issues surrounding eating revolutionized the way women perceive their life-long battles with weight. Now she turns her attention to the other great secret in American culture: our conflicted relationship with money.

Precipitated by the loss of her entire life savings in the Bernard Madoff scandal, Roth took a hard look at her own habits — and realized that there were direct parallels between her relationship with food and money: binge-shopping followed by periods of budgetary self-deprivation, “treating” herself in ways that ultimately failed to sustain, and using money as a substitute for love. She discovered a haunted and compulsive quality in her relationship with money – and faced with a crisis, she needed to find out why. What she learned was a revelation.”

This is the one I’m most excited about right now. I have been wanting to read the classic Awaken The Giant Within for as long as I can remember. Now there is a free E-book offering the highlight reel:

“To celebrate over two decades of radical transformation, we’ve compiled the best insights from Awaken the Giant Within—including how to crush your obstacles, how to use your personal values to achieve what you desire most, and how to use pain and pleasure to shape your destiny—into this special gift edition, Re-Awaken the Giant Within. “

In case it hasn’t always been clear, I don’t blog because I have it all together- I blog because I DON’T.

five reasons I blog:

1. to hold myself accountable. To continue the march forward in self improvement, knowing that I have a space waiting for me to write about the concrete action I’ve been taking to better myself. To keep going, to keep motivated, to always remember I have work to do.

2. to contribute to the conversation about living a fuller life. I didn’t want to just read what others had to say, I wanted to share those things with others. I also wanted to share my own thoughts and ideas as well in case they might be helpful or motivating.

3. to have my online time be more productive. Too often I have fallen into the time warp of mindless social media without true purpose. Some time ago, I wrote in my goal binder that I would like to, when I turn off my computer, be able to answer to myself:

What did I accomplish?

What did I learn?

And this blog {and the other online reading it inspires me to do} helps me to answer those questions for myself.

4. To connect with online positive influences. One of my favourite concepts is”You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” -Jim Rohn. I think that in a larger sense where I put my attention, I am influenced {As in, the law of attraction}. I think that if I spend my online time reading only the news and people who complain about the weather etc. I go away with a different attitude. I make it my business to seek out positive influences online, sometimes in the name of this blog. And I like that.

5. I get a chance to be creative. I truly love the work I do for a living, but it is not creative work. sometimes having ‘work to do’ on this blog that makes use of other parts of my mind helps to balance my life.

http://www.projectlifemastery.com is truly a wealth of information and insight on how to live a fulfilling, productive, meaningful life. This video is really a must-watch! I’ll have much more to say about this in future posts, but I just wanted to make sure I got it out there as soon as possible. Waste no time- this hour is an incredible personal investment and has the power to create immense positive change. I watched his first morning ritual video quite some time ago and it has led to a tremendous amount of excellent work in my life.